It leaves the sea and flops, slips, and slides across the land with horrible bonelessness….

Apparently, it’s not uncommon for this species of octopus to walk about the land. It is, of course, looking for food. But the way the slimy thing moves recalled a passage near the end of Wells’ The Time Machine:

A horror of this great darkness came on me. The cold, that smote to my marrow, and the pain I felt in breathing, overcame me. I shivered, and a deadly nausea seized me. Then like a red-hot bow in the sky appeared the edge of the sun. I got off the machine to recover myself. I felt giddy and incapable of facing the return journey. As I stood sick and confused I saw again the moving thing upon the shoal, there was no mistake now that it was a moving thing, against the red water of the sea. It was a round thing, the size of a football perhaps, or, it may be, bigger, and tentacles trailed down from it; it seemed black against the weltering blood-red water, and it was hopping fitfully about. Then I felt I was fainting. But a terrible dread of lying helpless in that remote and awful twilight sustained me while I clambered upon the saddle.

The hero of the book is looking at the end of humanity, the end of the world.

Charles Mudede—who writes about film, books, music, and his life in Rhodesia, Zimbabwe, the USA, and the UK for The Stranger—was born near a steel plant in Kwe Kwe, Zimbabwe. He has no memory...

7 replies on “That Land-Walking Thing”

  1. That was thoroughly enjoyable, despite even the frustratingly inane commentary of the onlookers & cameraperson. Charles should’ve presented us with another one of those alternate soundtracks for enhanced viewing experience.

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